Experiments & Visual Exploration

Art Media & Materials –

• Before I explore how I can implement texture into a game setting, I wanted to first experiment with how different materials depict the same object and how well these textures translate digitally.
• In my initial research I noted down all of the artistic media categories, but since I do not have time to test every medium I narrowed my focus down to 4: oil pastel, charcoal, yarn, and collage. 
• My reasoning for choosing these specific media was due to their wide spread of mark-making, depth, and tactility which together cover many of the qualities found across common art materials.  

Experiment Plan –

• As I’ve briefly explained I am going to create 4 separate art pieces each using the same reference photo of a plain 3D white cube. 
• The reason for choosing this object is that it allows me to showcase numerous important features such as dimensions, shadow, and depth. This will help me to understand how different materials represent an object and how they translate these features digitally.

Physical Cube Experiments –

• Oil Pastel
  • Thick, Waxy marks, strong colour, messy
• Charcoal
  • Smudging, soft gradients, dusty
• Yarn
  • 3D, rough, handmade feel 
• Collaged paper
  • Flat, layering, visually busy

Digitising Texture –

• What changed once they were digitized?
  • All of the changes observed were seen in every material.These changes where;
  • Their depth all flattened
  • There was more of a reliance on light & shadow over material interaction
  • However, although these changes were present in each element some textures read better than others.
  • Oil pastel and charcoal seemed to fare best when digitized as they predominantly rely on imitating light & dark and imitate depth instead of creating it.
  • Yarn and collage however, rely on creating depth through layering and utilising 3D so when this is stripped away it loses its character.

Texture → Interaction Design

• I concluded in my research that texture is felt in 3 predominant way: controller vibration, texture-specific sound design, and visual feedback 

• This is how current games get around the issue of certain materials not translating well. But what I want is to create a game that develops upon this, and captures every characteristic of each texture in-game .